Sustainable Tarpon Springs - Quality and Presence for 2013!

Happy 2013, Tarpon Springs friends!  We are embarking upon an exciting year of opportunities!  What shall we do to manifest our dreams of sustainability this year?  The ‘evolution of consciousness’ we awaited has shown us that it’s not an external event that will change our world, but we who have the capacity to bring change to the world ourselves!  WE are called to be our own heroes!  

As a person who has always experienced January 1st as a profound turning point - an annual marker where we can embrace the best in ourselves and in one another to make a positive difference in our world -  this date borders on being a ‘spiritual experience’ for me.  I’m not so keen on making impossible and deliberate resolutions - such as not to eat so much sugar, or to do my daily exercise, or to stop complaining (which I am continually working on) - but I feel it is a perfect opportunity for a Day of Reflection.  On the week from Christmas to New Years, I am subconsciously zeroing in on the highest priorities I hope to ‘expose to the Light of Change’.   Words that kept arising in my heart and mind this season were ‘Quality and Presence’.

This may come as somewhat of a surprise, but what I have loved to do for a ‘living’ for many years is bicycle maintenance and repair!  My ‘extra-curricular activities’ have been writing, painting, making jewelry, and playing music with my husband and son.  So,as a bike mechanic, I was intrigued by the title of the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (by Robert M. Pirsig) long before I ever had a copy to read.  On my best days as a mechanic, everything seemed to effortlessly flow with a sense of perfection I myself didn’t feel capable of achieving.  I’d jokingly tell my staff I was in the ‘Zen Zone’ on those days.

When I finally read the book, I was surprised by the lengthy dissertation on ‘Quality’  - thus the full title, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.  It made so much more sense to me as a mechanic who struggled to make imperfectly designed or produced products into machines that would actually function as flawlessly as possible.  I found myself having a similar ‘internal dialog’ to what the author had with his alter-ego, Phaedrus, as I was confronted with what consumers have come to accept as normal.  Everyone wants to pay less and less for items, thus the attention to functional detail has spiraled downward.  Perfection might not be realistic, but to put full attention, value, and pride into things we design and build must still be possible - or so I hoped!

Isn’t it worth saving for something made well enough not to be disposable tomorrow?  Beyond that, by doing so, we are contributing to a world where true quality matters!  And with whatever we personal do, I would hope we do with full consciousness and presence.  That is the key to changing the quality of every single thing in this world at the cellular level.  And rather than ‘green-washing’ our quest to be sustainable, we are finding the Key.  The inverse of the ‘multi-tasking mentality’ is to offer authentic Quality and Presence to every choice we make for LIFE!  “The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.” - Robert M. Pirsig   What a noble intention for 2013!